What Exactly Is ‘Locker-Room Talk’? Let an Expert Explain

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The New York Times sportswriter Bill Pennington has heard distasteful boasting and crude talk in locker rooms, but never anything that could be described as about sexual assault.CreditCreditWilliam Widmer for The New York Times

My father was a coach and the manager of a sporting goods store that installed and maintained equipment at athletic facilities. By the time I was in third grade, I had already spent countless days and nights in locker rooms — at colleges, high schools, prep schools, private adult clubs, you name it.

Then I became a football player and track athlete, something that continued into my college years. Until I was 20 years old, it felt as if half my life took place inside a locker room.

Not long after I stopped competing seriously, I became a sportswriter. What was my job day after day?

Hanging out in a locker room.

I’ve been paid to be there — and listen to what is said there — for the better part of 30 years.

Thanks to Donald Trump, the term “locker-room talk” suddenly is widely discussed. It is a pretty broad term; I’ve heard athletes in locker rooms deeply engrossed in conversations on their municipal bond portfolios and what to feed their cats and, of course, traffic.

Trump was recorded talking about forcibly kissing and groping women, and after an uproar, he chalked it up to “locker-room talk.”

The episode raised the question of how common such extreme talk is in locker rooms.

Yet I would say that while I have heard distasteful boasting and crude talk about the attributes of a recent date or a new girlfriend — wives never seem to come up — I’ve never heard anything that could be described as an assault, or any crime. Not even close.

This is not the same as saying those acts do not happen. I’m just saying it is not any kind of locker-room talk I have heard in my decades working and functioning in that space. Granted, the professional athletes have hours to themselves when the news media is not present. But reporters’ access to teams throughout a long season is considerable, especially in a sport like baseball where you’re part of the traveling circus crisscrossing North America for as long as nine months. You are together with the players far more than any other group of people in your life.

In general, it has been my experience that the talk about women in a men’s locker room is much rarer than most people want to believe, and much rarer than it was many years ago.

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When Donald J. Trump apologized after a recording of him talking about forcibly kissing and groping women was released, he called it “locker-room talk.”CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

That does not mean the locker room is the most enlightened, progressive environment on the planet.

There have been many, repeated episodes in which players accosted, harassed and berated women reporters in men’s locker rooms because of their gender. Some have exposed themselves to female reporters in a way that appeared to go beyond undressing for the shower, though this kind of behavior was far more common when female reporters first began working in male locker rooms.

But if it is the talk in locker rooms that America is focusing on these days, it tends to be more generic and routine than frequently depicted. There is much more talk of aches and pains, and, as always, a lot of talk about cultural interests: music, concerts, films, video games and TV shows.

One of the funniest if most unlikely conversations I heard was about traffic. In the late 1990s, I remember listening to Giants cornerback Jason Sehorn and his friend Danny Kanell, a quarterback, in a conversation that bordered on something from Abbott and Costello.

“Why can’t you make a left turn on these New Jersey roads?” Sehorn asked.

“That’s only true on a divided highway,” Kanell answered.

“You mean on a freeway?” the California-raised Sehorn said.

“Well, it is free unless it’s the turnpike,” Kanell said.

“There’s a turnpike, a highway and a freeway?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kanell said. “And instead of taking a left turn, you use the jughandle.”

Sehorn: “What’s a jughandle?”

There is, especially these days, a certain amount of political chatter. It is usually playful, with a few jabs yelled across the room about a candidate.

But after Trump uttered his “locker-room talk” line over and over in the debate with Hillary Clinton on Sunday night, athletes everywhere — and anyone who frequents gyms — might have taken offense. Several professional athletes lashed out on Twitter.

“Have I been in every locker room?” Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Chris Conley wrote on his Twitter account. “No. But the guys I know and respect don’t talk like that. They talk about girls but not like that. Period.”

Oakland A’s pitcher Sean Doolittle said on Twitter, “As an athlete, I’ve been in locker rooms my entire adult life and uh, that’s not locker-room talk.”

But Atlanta Falcons tight end Jacob Tamme may have had the last word, and spoke for many.

Having just left the locker room after his team’s victory over the Broncos in Denver on Sunday night, Tamme wrote: “I showered after our game but I feel like I need another one after watching the debate.”

He added: “The attempt to normalize it as any type of ‘talk’ is wrong. I refuse to let my son think that this is ‘just how men speak.’”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B7 of the New York edition with the headline: Talk in a Locker Room Is Not What One Thinks. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe